Happy Birthday, Richard Armitage!

Servetus has a thoughtful and wonderfully insightful blog for the birthday celebrations here.

The other event that is returning today for the 533rd time is the Battle of Bosworth, where King Richard III died and which is the reason for Richard Armitage’s first name.

After the death of King Richard III, history and myth was not kind to the king.

That especially is a fact that grips me, as right now I have quite some of my acquaintances who – because of illness or age – are penning down their legacy and making notes how they want to be remembered after their deaths. That is not only a look and planning into an uncertain future, anticipating what might happen, but also demands a review of the life they lead, what they did, and from all their planning and working, to pin the fluidity of life down to what really worked out.

King Richard III never had a chance to do such a planning and at least we do not know about the review he would give his own life. Others determined, what we remember of the king and his deeds.

A main crime always pinned on the king, was the murder of his two young nephews, the known ‘Princes in the Tower’.

The main researcher for finding King Richard III, Dr. John Ashdown-Hill, before his own death finished a research into this topic, which just recently was published posthumously and I got a chance to read already.

I mention this book here, because its unique research does not only go into the facts, as much as we know about them, but also shows the development of ‘opinion’ and ‘myth’ around the ‘event’, if it indeed was one. The rich detail and meticulous research we are used to in the work of Dr. Ashdown-Hill, fascinates with giving a clear structure to all the rumours and suspicions, circling around King Richard III and also follows their historical progression. That in itself is a recommendable feat, if Dr. Ashdown-Hill was not already remembered in our ‘KRA-Hall of Fame’ as the historical researcher who made the finding of King Richard III possible.

I have recognised that for the U.S. the publishing date is set as November 1st, 2018. In the U.K. and other regions, the book is already available. It also will come out as e-book, so please check in your region. (Embedded links here are only given for your convenience.)